Maher El-Gowhary is a broken and defeated man who has grown tired of life on the run. After a four-year battle to have the Egyptian state recognise his Christian faith, he is seriously contemplating reverting to Islam. "I am seen as an outcast and have lost everything: my family, my home, my dignity and my inheritance," he laments.
For Maher and his daughter Dina, life has become "practically intolerable". A former Muslim who converted to Christianity 30 years ago, Maher publicly announced their change of faith in 2008 when he filed a lawsuit against the Mubarak government hoping to gain the right to change the religious status on his national identification card from Islam to Christianity. He was only the second citizen to attempt to get the state to recognise his changed faith. read more...
Maher El-Gowhary and his 15-year-old daughter Dina are constantly under threat, always on the run because they converted to Christianity in a largely Muslim country Maher and Dina nervously agreed to meet us at a Church in Cairo. The priest at the Church said he feared problems from the Egyptian authorities and while he agreed to have us watch his Sunday mass, the Priest declined to speak to us about what is happening in Egypt and to the El-Gowhary's. Several religious fatwas have been issued for "spilling his blood" after Maher asked an Egyptian Court to legally recognize his conversion, so he can one day be buried as a Christian and so his daughter won't be forced into a marriage by her Muslim mother.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - 19 January marked another year for the longest religious imprisonment of a man in Saudi Arabia: one of the world's most religiously extreme countries, where the international and local media took stance on this topic.
The story of Hadi Al-Mutif goes back to 1993, where he was training in a police camp in Saudi Arabia. Two of his colleagues accused him of satire of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), and hardliner judge Abdullah Al-Mukhlaf sentenced him to death because of his Ismaili beliefs. Hadi was identified as an unbeliever, or ‘Kafir’, as the judge stated in the death decree. The judgment was clearly biased due to his religious beliefs. read more...
Two young women who converted from Islam to Christianity will soon face an Iranian court. Maryam Rostampour, 27, and Marzieh Amirizadeh, 30, were arrested last year. They were held and abused for six months in a Tehran prison. Numerous reports say the women were detained for converting to Christianity. read more...
Relatives attack convert family for deserting Islam. ISTANBUL – On trial for converting from Islam to Christianity, a Jordanian man may lose legal custody of his children and have his marriage annulled if found guilty of “apostasy.” Mohammad Abbad, 40, fled Jordan last month after Muslims violently attacked him and his 10-year-old son in their home and his father sued him on charges of apostasy, or leaving Islam. read more...
Unreported World exposes a dark side to Egypt that the authorities don't want foreigners to see: a secretive society of around 40,000 people literally living in rubbish in a Cairo ghetto overrun by rats and disease. Reporter Evan Williams and producer James Brabazon are some of the first journalists to film inside the ghetto where tens of thousands live with garbage stacked to the roofs of their multi-storey homes - eking out a living recycling the rubbish by hand. It's a sight rarely seen by outsiders, and almost definitely not by the million British Tourists who visit Egypt every year. read more...
From the Gaza strip to neighboring Egypt, his father is promising to kill him for becoming a believer. Now he's on the run with his wife and little baby. Mohammed Hijazi's father always taught him to hate Christians. And yet Mohammed's Christian neighbors in his home town in Egypt always treated him with love and kindness. The more he learned about Islam, the more he began to feel distant from the "god" of Islam. That was the beginning of a quest to find out more about Jesus Christ. - CBN Report
